mushroom foraging

White morel mushrooms peek up from a bed of fall leaves at Scott's Run Nature Preserve in McLean, VA.

Just off one of Washington, D.C.'s busiest interstates, a group of George Mason University students has gathered in a lush nature preserve, armed with collection bags, cameras, and some of the area’s top mushroom hunters. Their mission? Morels—those tasty, elusive, honeycombed beauties that pop up in woods from Oregon to Maryland each spring.